Toyota will move production of Lexus ES, the best-selling Lexus car in the U.S., to Kentucky from Japan in 2015. / Dewhurst Photography

by James R. Healey, USA TODAY

by James R. Healey, USA TODAY

It took a decade and a recession and a tsunami and a battering from yo-yo currency exchange rates, but giant automaker Toyota Motor finally decided that it is safe to build its Lexus luxury brand in the U.S.

It's common sense, of course, to shift production to the U.S., as the auto giant announced today it would do by moving the Lexus ES sedan to Georgetown, Ky., from Japan, starting in 2015. The huge Kentucky factory already builds models mechanically similar to the Lexus ES 350.

Building vehicles where they are sold lets a company account for costs and revenue in the same currency, cutting out the risk of shifting values.

Too, ES is the best-selling Lexus car in the U.S. which leverages any amounts saved by U.S. production. "Lexus was founded in the United States, so it is only fitting that we are bringing the production of luxury sedans for our U.S. customers back to where the brand was born," Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda said.

Too, Kentucky gave Toyota $146 million-plus in tax incentives to do the deal.

"Producing the Lexus ES in Kentucky makes sense for Toyota," says Alec Gutierrez, analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "While the tax incentives over the next 10 years certainly didn't hurt, the move will allow Toyota to further reduce the risk of a strong yen" that undermines profits on cars made in Japan and shipped to the U.S.

Definitely a compelling case for U.S. manufacture.

But even under faster-paced chief Toyoda, member of the founding family, the car company remains big and deliberate in its movements. And nervous.

Toyota moved the first Lexus outside its Japan factories, into a Canadian plant a decade ago. That was the RX crossover SUV, which is the best-selling Lexus in the U.S. And Toyota wasn't exactly benign about it.

Its manufacturing executives said then, and not too quietly, that they worried they couldn't get the consistently high-quality components from North American suppliers that they were used to getting in Japan.

Assembly line quality wasn't as worrisome. Toyota had been building cars there since the late 1980s, and had schooled the workers in its processes.

And it has that luxury in Kentucky, too, where the Georgetown plant has been cranking out cars and heavy parts -- engines, axles, steering components -- since 1986. It's the biggest Toyota factory outside Japan.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear thanked Toyoda, and said, "We are deeply honored that you have entrusted the manufacturing of your top-selling Lexus sedan to us in Kentucky. We realize the care and pride you take in this vehicle, and that it requires the utmost in a skilled workforce, not to mention top-quality components."

The production shift "signals that Toyota is willing to break tradition to gain a stronger foothold in the U.S. and could hint that additional Lexus nameplates" will come to U.S. factories, Gutierrez says.

It will be interesting to see if Toyoda's brisker corporate pace makes that happen sooner, rather than later.